


In The Ground

by anfarlamb



Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: 2020 L'Manberg Election on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Angst, Gen, Ghost Jschlatt (Video Blogging RPF), Ghost Wilbur Soot, Guilt, Insane Wilbur Soot, L'Manberg War of Independence on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Mentioned Alexis | Quackity, Mentioned Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Mentioned Eret (Video Blogging RPF), Mentioned Niki | Nihachu, Mentioned Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Older Sibling Wilbur Soot, Past Character Death, Post-Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Protective Wilbur Soot, Wilbur Soot and Technoblade and TommyInnit are Siblings, Wilbur Soot-centric, i want l'manberg wil back can you tell?, please read notes for full warnings!!, sibling dynamic is strong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 09:01:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29079777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anfarlamb/pseuds/anfarlamb
Summary: Wilbur Soot figured that one day, things would finally be calm enough to keep him from constantly reliving his past. It was something he had suffered from while he lived, too, and it was something that haunted him in death, no matter how hard he tried to escape it. Memories and ideas, thoughts and recollections; all of them muddied together in a melting pot that the ex-president had no idea how to understand.The timeline itself was steady enough, a somewhat linear set of events that he could follow, despite the fact that the truths blurred harshly as he continued down the line. But he knew what had happened. He just didn't know what was going to occur after.After?
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s), Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Kudos: 44





	In The Ground

**Author's Note:**

> hello!  
> this is my second piece im posting on ao3, i hope its better in terms of like formatting LOL  
> i mentioned last time i was working on a dream smp fic, i think im scrapping that idea and instead just gonna try to post something of length and quality once a month that aligns with the current lore since that's what ill have motivation for (i assume). still a small chance i write a full-fledged fic, but its just more likely you'll get stuff like this so stay tuned
> 
> anyway! this is rather long tbh it wasn't meant to be but its chill! this details wilbur's thought process throughout l'manberg and its rise/fall (plus what happens after said rise/fall), mainly centering on his relationship with tommy and how he feels abt what has happened! i just want lmanberg wil back i miss him so that's what this is LMAO
> 
> warnings for content: obviously this contains the entirety of the smp so far, so it will include death (duel, final control room, button room, etc), all in fair amounts of detail but nothing excessively gorey since its not about death its about tommy wilbur brothers. there are other deaths mentioned that arent delved into as much, but since wilbur is dead it is a major topic in the fic. since its the smp it refers frequently to injury and violence (re: duel, war), and also covers manipulation/abuse because of tommy's exile/pogtopia wil. be safe !  
> also if any CCs want this taken down or altered for any reason id be happy to do so, this is about the characters not the ppl. u know the drill
> 
> thank you, and enjoy! :]

Wilbur Soot knew from the start that sending children to war was a bad idea.

Boys were meant to carry rocks in their hands, not knives. Boys were meant to wear t-shirts and sneakers, not revolutionary getup and dark, muddied boots. Boys were meant to climb trees with close buddies, not scale towers with cold-faced soldiers of battalions. 

He made them do it anyway. 

Wilbur had always said that weapons were nothing compared to words. He followed the ideal as best as he could, which was well, all considered. Yet somehow, he had let false prophecies fill his family’s heads - Tommy most of all, his younger brother with the shiny blue eyes, wide like the ocean, deep like the sea.

Maybe it had begun when Wilbur had first shown Tommy his guitar and strummed a simple tune, humming along half-baked lyrics that enticed him into the world of music. Maybe that was when Tommy had decided that a melody was the most important thing to him, and maybe that was why _Mellohi_ and _Cat_ became such a centerpiece of his early life. If he hadn’t introduced him to that guitar, that twinge of excitement as he created new harmonies, maybe it would’ve been easier to deal with the loss of prized discs.

Perhaps it had been the potions in the Camarvan. It had been a joke at first, a sort of half-serious thought that the duo would make swirling creations in a van, because Wilbur had never created potions before and knew of their potential danger. He knew they gave strength or weakness or poison or anything, really, in such an unsteady manner. Blaze rods were not a stable source of power. But his blonde brother was never one to back down from any sort of new foray, so he should’ve expected it to be a lot more important than it was.

Then there was a nation at his fingertips, sprung from injustice that crackled through the air in the form of soaring arrows and swishing swords. It was a home with friends who he vowed to protect, who he _had_ to protect because nobody else did, nobody else could. He and Tommy had lost a brother and a father long ago in a flood that none could stop, and so this was all they had. They had a flag hand stitched carefully by his son, blue suits by a friend with dark glasses, loaves of bread from a well-meaning woman, and more potions, invented by another blonde boy, wearing green and not red.

And when the nation swayed from him, tugged away by a man in a ceramic mask, he had to pull back.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you, Wilbur?” A familiar, low voice grated against his ears, one which he had grown to despise.

He did not answer.

It had been wrong to bestow the rank of a commander onto a 16-year-old, and he knew it when he’d said it, but he couldn’t take it back. He watched as Tommy’s eyes flickered with pride, warmth, face blooming into a delighted masterpiece, and he relished so greatly in the fact that he had been able to make his younger brother feel like that. Wilbur couldn’t take that away from him. Tommy accepted the title, accepted everything that came with it, and he couldn’t help but feel like a bad leader for having not warned of the intense stressors that would lay upon one’s shoulders in the nighttime. The guilt that chained him to his room. The fear that paralyzed him in his sleep.

Sure, he had stood in the face of death when the opposing side fired arrows down on him so that his men could run ahead, and sure, it was a great burden to take on an army, but he was an adult. Tommy was not. He should’ve been able to shoulder it all so that his brother didn’t have to. He _should’ve_ been a great leader - and in a way, he was, for being that way, for thinking that. But he knew that there was something wrong with it all. 

It had been wrong to have Tubbo make them all potions, and it had been wrong to make Niki mine for all those iron ingots and all those diamonds, and it had been wrong to make Eret create armor and tools out of thin air and find enchantments, and it had been wrong to make Jack build up the nation’s meager defenses to try to ensure nothing happened within the walls. Maybe it had even been wrong to try to place all of it on himself so that nobody else had to deal with it. Everything about that war had been so wrong, and he knew it now. He’d known it then. He’d just decided that it didn’t matter. What mattered more was victory; winning a war and securing safety for his nation, for his people, for his friends.

That came at a cost he had not expected.

Lives were lost, of course. He knew that was going to happen. It was a war, after all. He just hadn’t expected a betrayal, a duel, a loss, and then a victory so bittersweet that he wasn’t sure if it was worth it at all.

Wilbur had been the first one to die after Eret had betrayed them in that stupid room. He was pretty certain that was the case, anyways. It was hard to remember that detail, and even though it had happened so long ago, there were certain parts he couldn’t forget. He remembered a sword sinking into his back from a man wearing a white hoodie, as if to mirror Dream's lime one a few feet to his left. He remembered the screaming, the tears, the shock, the guilt. That one the worst. His own exclamation: _“A traitor!”_ And then darkness. Black. Pain. Blood. All of it, flashing so bright that he was positive he’d gone blind, and then the faint trickle of warmth from a sunrise as he woke in a field.

His home had been blown up soon after. He shouldn’t have expected anything more from the world than running through dingy tunnels, away from tyrants and men of evil ideas, running with boys of pure hearts and adults pressed into roles they couldn’t shoulder. 

The duel had been worse. It had been bad having to come to terms with the fact that he’d caused the death of all of his friends by trusting such a ruthless individual, but Tommy took it upon himself to duel Dream. _Dream._ The Dream. Not just any old man with a bow. The leader of a nation, the brutal country who they’d been so desperately trying to break away from in recent months.

He remembered counting. Each number was like a separate prayer, that even if Tommy was hit, he wouldn’t die. The man was sure he wouldn’t have been able to handle it if his brother died again. It had been bad the first time, and he hadn’t even really watched it. Just knowing that he had failed was enough to make _him_ feel worse than death. 

Dream was too good of a shot to miss more than three times, and they all should’ve known that.

Wilbur remembered holding his brother’s body, staring into his cold, grayed out eyes. A reddened arrow stuck from his chest, giggling and smiling at the chaos that unfolded, and all Wilbur could do was grip him tighter, desperately hoping he would say something, hoping for any sign that this would not be a death for the boy, hoping he’d cough a reassurance and they could go and grab a potion. Tubbo was at his side not long after, Fundy spitting his frustrations at a cool-hearted man nearby.

There would be no reassurance. There would be no sign. His little brother stopped moving as the water turned crimson beneath him, and Wilbur ripped the projectile from its place with a ruined sob surging in his throat. He knew then that Tommy’s life had never been worth victory, independence, any of it. He had known that before, but it had taken two deaths and a terrible cry to realize it.

He was sure everyone else knew it, too. He was not blind to the terror and tragedy on Tubbo’s face, nor the way that the boy’s fingers curled around Tommy’s bloodied uniform as they hauled him away. He was not blind to the anger in Fundy’s eyes, to the desolate sadness in Niki’s slow movements, to the quick, chopped statements that Jack offered. They all knew now.

Everyone except Tommy. 

The boy traded his discs away like they were worth nothing, like they were just some pieces of vinyl and did not stand for something greater, like his happiness did not matter. When he’d told his blonde brother that the fire in his heart was too strong, he hadn’t been lying. He meant it. The fire blinded him, filled his head with smoke that he himself had teased into dreams of impossible successes.

“Wilbur? Don’t ignore me!” The voice was more irritated, and his hues cracked open slightly to spy that awfully familiar shape of a horned man. 

He continued to do so.

In the end, he wouldn’t have been able to repay Tommy for what he had done. They had gained victory. L’manberg was free. No matter how Dream tried to twist it, they were free because of his brother’s bargaining, with nothing more to lose than one more life and his most prized possessions. The boy had arguably given the most up for L’manberg, and yet, people still stepped on him like he was just as useless as he thought he was, no matter how much he played up his strengths. Wilbur was tired of that. Wilbur was tired of people walking over Tommy, and over himself too. People didn’t listen when there was no real power attached to their titles.

So he created that power. He made it up in the middle of the night, written in ink, a scribbled title: _Electoral Ballot_. He wrote down policies with Tommy, discussed theories with Tubbo, planned speeches alone. Presidency was difficult, and he knew this already. The tear tracks on his pillows indicated he knew it. The red rim in his eyes indicated he knew it. The broken pencils and snapped guitar strings indicated he knew it. Wilbur already was aware that presidency was not easy, but he volunteered to carry it anyway because he’d already done so much and he knew nobody else deserved to shoulder it.

But he smiled, because there were still things to be happy about. There was still cause for celebration. He smiled because Tommy didn’t need to see him unhappy, because Tubbo’s kindness didn’t warrant another burden, because Niki was always cheerful when she said hello, because Fundy had been distant for a while and he wanted to mend things. He did. He was just poor at expressing it. 

And then Quackity ran against him. He had been a friend, once, with a constant grin that played on the edges of his lips. Though Tommy had been the one to give him the affectionate nickname - Big Q - they all enjoyed his company equally. Even as they rallied numbers against the opposing party, they understood one thing; that this was for the good of L’manberg. 

They ran not for themselves, but for L’manberg.

Jschlatt did not care about L’manberg.

Wilbur would never forget that stupid speech for as long as he lived. In the nighttime it haunted him, creeping up and locking bloodied hands around his ankles, grinning sardonically at the tortured man. He would never forget that terrible smile on Schlatt’s face because he knew he’d won. He won democratically, and there was nothing that he could do to fight it. 

_“...is to revoke the citizenship of Wilbur Soot and TommyInnit!”_

He was running through the forest, completely shell-shocked into silence, not knowing what to say, or what to do, and unable to keep thoughts from flooding his mind. He crumpled into the nearest tree when an arrow struck his shoulder, and he wondered absently as he lay dying if this was how Tommy had felt. Like everything had been stripped away from him. Like there was no such thing as fairness, as justice. It had been torn from his grasp the moment he’d try to instill it.

And then Tommy was there, flashing in a blurred and faded vision, in a gaze splattered by blood and tears. He was meant to have protected Tommy, yet he’d gotten exiled alongside him and had to protect a dying man. Back then, he’d almost wished that he’d pleaded with Schlatt to banish him and him only, so that Tommy could’ve stayed and lived in the nation he’d built. He wished now that Tommy hadn’t seen him lose his second life. 

_“Wil, Wil-! Oh my God. Wil!”_ He smiled reassuringly at his brother, teeth stained crimson, and Tommy only cried harder. He wished he hadn’t done that. He wished he’d told Tommy to run off and do something else so that he hadn’t watched. It had been Wilbur’s job to protect him, and he had failed. 

The blame fell back onto his shoulders. It always had, and it always would.

“Oh, you’re doing that fading thing again.” _God_ , he wished more than anything that he’d just shut up. Speaking was hard enough as it was, and the tether to this world was thin enough so that he could just barely hear him. He wished it’d go quicker.

Pogtopia was a new beast that none of them were ready for.

It wasn’t just a rebellion. It was an idea, just like how L’manberg was. Except the idea was not the same as L’manberg - one was built on nobility, the other was built on desperation. On terror of another betrayal. On feigned aptitude and virtue. Wilbur had known he’d needed power, just like he had when he’d called the election. This time, he couldn’t just scrawl a speech in the night. Words did not work anymore. Weapons were what he needed. 

He didn’t expect his twin to show up.

It was like a sliver of the past had suddenly reappeared with no warning at all, a past which he had believed to be so far gone that even the tiniest bit of resurgence caused a set of feelings he didn’t know how to deal with. Technoblade explained in the simplest terms that he and Phil - _“Phil? Philza?” Eyes gleamed brightly, suddenly infected by a lost warmth and excitement. “Where is he? Does he miss us?”_ \- had toppled nations, had upstaged leaders, ruled countries, and lost it all. The duo had gotten split up, and Phil was nowhere to be found. Again.

Wilbur hadn’t been vexed with Techno. He ignored it, carefully swerved around the topic, and asked about what had happened after the flood, after the family had been divided. Techno said he and Phil hadn’t been able to get back to wherever Wilbur and Tommy had gone, though luckily he’d heard news of some nation called ‘L’manberg’, and with its name, had known his brothers had something to do with it.

Tactfully, he avoided mentioning these facts to Tommy. He wasn’t sure if Techno went out of his way to spill the information anyways, but he wanted everything that Tommy heard to be correct. He was just a boy, after all, and everything he should’ve been learning needed to be true. If he received lies about a world that had been groomed to hate him, then he would gain an illegitimate sense of positivity, as he had long ago.

Who better to teach than the fallen leader of a nation? 

Wilbur knew his hands carried fire that scorched Tommy’s arms when he grasped them, trying to convince the boy that the same things would happen to him. _Look,_ he tried to say, _I did everything right. I made a nation for everyone to live in! I protected everyone to the best of my ability! And you know what they all did? They betrayed me. They kicked me out. And you’ve done just as much as me. They’ll do the exact same thing to you._ He believed the words he said. He meant the best when he did it.

He just wanted to protect Tommy from suffering his fate.

He didn’t know when he stopped meaning the best.

When he started up the pit. When he laughed in the face of terror instead of fighting against it. When he smiled at a fearful kid instead of helping him. When he stopped feeling bad about cackling manically in the nights, letting the noise echo off the walls and sink into skin that did not deserve it. When he swerved too close to the edges of the walkway down into the ravine, when he swayed atop hills and stared over cliffs. When he reprimanded instead of reassured; when he flashed a knife instead of a polite expression.

When things slipped right from his grasp and shattered on the floor in a million, un-glueable pieces.

He did not like thinking of Pogtopia, but knew that Tommy and Techno did not like thinking of it more.

The festival was wholly unexpected, but it had been the perfect opportunity for a man with a mind tinged by madness. There was to be a gathering of the nation that he’d lost, with all of its best members put on pedestals and its worst shoved into the ground. Why would anyone want to destroy such a celebration? Only villains insisted on that. Only men with evil buried in their souls insisted on that.

_“Then let’s be the bad guys.”_

It was the perfect plan.

Of course, Schlatt never let things go to plan.

Wilbur hadn’t thought that Techno would’ve killed Tubbo. When he reassured his spy that he wasn’t about to be dead with a firework to his chest, he’d believed himself to be telling the truth. He believed that his brother had enough control to put the bow down and fire it into a nearby president instead. Nothing ever went to plan. Chaos broke out in an instant. Tommy was rushing forward with a scream, Niki was standing up in the crowd, Tubbo was crumpling to the floor nearby, and the plot to blow it up was lost in his confrontation with Schlatt.

He knew that both Tubbo and Tommy hadn’t taken the event well at all. But it didn’t matter. They were shoved back into that dreary ravine with the fire that flickered on its walls, the ones that Wilbur stared at deep into the night, wishing he could put his hand in it, wishing he could go down with it. 

The button room had never disappeared. It was always there. He visited it frequently, loitering around the outside and entering a few times, staring, wishing, wondering. Wilbur was never sad while he was with the button - in fact, it brought him the opposite emotion. Typically, when he entered, the anthem played itself in his head like a broken record. 

Like a disc. 

Usually, he tugged himself away. Quackity had shown up once. So had Tommy. He had really wanted to press it that time. He wanted to press it everytime, but just to see their reactions would’ve been enough for the man in the trench coat. 

November sixteenth was a more perfect date than the prior festival, he decided. Schlatt would be there. Fundy would be there, on his side for once, though the thought was too far gone to save the man at that point. Tommy, Niki, Tubbo, Techno, Quackity, all of them were on his side, and really, the fact that this was true only confirmed his earlier suspicions, the ones he’d been pressing to Tommy for so long. People were only with him because Schlatt was weak. 

His hands were often coated in gunpowder when he returned to Pogtopia in the mornings, and Techno was often awake for such occasions.

_“Wilbur? Another late night?”_

_He tossed a twisted grin to the warrior. “You bet.”_

Techno never asked. Techno never pried, he never questioned further than what was presented. Wilbur knew he was thinking of it, but he never, ever, pulled back the layers to see the damaged flesh beneath. Instead, he took a bloodied bandage and awkwardly tied it over top.

_“Get some rest,” he muttered, knowing that the shadows beneath his brother’s eyes would only grow._

Wilbur flounced off every time like a schoolgirl headed to the nearest ice-cream truck after classes were over, like he was the happiest man in the world. The days leading up to the war were actually good, better than any of the other days. He knew that he frightened Tommy, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. The guitar lay in a ditch somewhere, broken and bruised, and he wished it could’ve been him instead.

He spoke with Dream, who had given him more dynamite than he could’ve asked for. The redness of their tones brought him joy - they looked like batons of blood, ready to conduct a symphony that would end abruptly. 

Naturally, he dropped hints, as if somewhere deep down, he wanted someone to notice and pull him from the role he’d placed himself into. The man walked behind the crowd when they were traveling to Manberg, stared confusedly at Dream when he said that there was no traitor, whispered words to people who did not listen when they tried to figure out who would betray them. Nobody paid attention. Everyone was caught up in the blaze of glory that this war would bring them. That it’d bring them a country that was already ruined and had been ruined from the start. 

A captain always went down with his ship. 

_“Kill me, Phil!”_

The diamond blade was cold. Philza’s wings, one broken, the other kind and accepting, swept around him as he smiled, teeth bloodstained, at his father, just like how he had to Tommy many weeks ago. At least this time he knew he didn’t have to say anything. He could feel how Phil crumpled in on himself when his son _smiled_ , dying in his arms. 

Everything was light, for just a moment.

But that was not the end.

There was a sudden rush of feeling, of forgotten warmth in his fingertips. He was floating, he was soaring directly up into the clouds, a dove with wide wings that protected the smoldering world beneath it. He was going up and up and up and he thought he’d never come down, overcome with powerful feeling that tightened his chest and made him want to cry and laugh at the same time.

He fell all the way down and he was not wearing a trenchcoat anymore.

“You are so goddamn annoying.” The gruff voice returned, far quieter than before. Wilbur’s eyes cracked slightly open and barely caught on the image of the man in the blue top, standing with his arms folded over his chest, eyes narrowed. “So you _can_ hear me!”

Being Ghostbur was strange.

It was like he was an entirely new individual, and yet, he was the exact same. He wore that soft yellow sweater from his pre-L’manberg days, he kept simple shoes and trousers instead of complicated boots that he had to lace up with delicate fingers, and he found his guitar. He couldn’t sing anymore - his voice was all crinkled like a ruined declaration, written at midnight, but he still plucked the strings every now and again.

He was calmer, softer, gentler than he had been in a very long time. But he was not the same, and everyone knew that. His edges were worn and impossible to smooth out. He didn’t know of the real Wilbur’s actions, but judging everyone else’s reactions wasn’t too hard. Nobody liked him. He didn’t have a grave. He was a bad man, a bad president. A bad leader.

A bad brother.

So he called himself Ghostbur and insisted others do the same. He strayed from any mention of the terrible commander, avoided quiet mutterings in the night about the fiery-handed man with dynamite in his heart. He didn’t want to hear about that version of himself. He didn’t think it was there anymore. The blue that he loved so dearly kept it all abay in his head when he wasn’t able to get away from his own thoughts. 

Ghostbur’s memories were blurrier than he recalled. He remembered a flashing image of Fundy and Phil at the docks- no, that was gone. His fingers flexed absently as if to grab onto it, and around him, he barely noticed a swishing motion. He remembered Tommy and Tubbo-

_“As long as I can’t be the next Schlatt, you can’t be the next Wilbur.”_

An invisible hand pressed hard against his chest, and air escaped from his lungs without him realizing it.

_“You had one job, you couldn’t do one thing for me- you couldn’t do one! Just one thing, and it was for your own good!” Tubbo was standing tall on an obsidian wall, facing his friend in the red-and-white shirt, rain falling heavily around them. “You messed this up for no one but yourself.”_

_Tommy stared back, blank, terrified, confused, and Ghostbur, who hovered nearby, knew in that moment what was about to happen. He was not Ghostbur and this was not the Tommy after Manberg. They were standing in a crowd of people, and he wore a tattered blue coat, and Tommy tugged on his sleeve, whispering something to him._

The memory faded slightly at its edges. 

_“Selfish.”_

_“Dream, please detain and escort Tommy from my country.”_

Logstedshire.

Dream liked to manipulate people whose minds teetered on the edge of mania and depression. He, as Ghostbur, had not known this fact, but he knew it now. He, as Ghostbur, had accepted every crumb of understanding that the masked man had given him, for he had forgotten the time in which he held a sword to the man’s throat and insisted on nothing but victory for his people. He, as Ghostbur, had no idea what he was going to do to Tommy.

The man in the ceramic mask used everything that he had done to worsen Tommy’s fears, to worsen the boy’s intense sadness. He grabbed his wrists just like how Wilbur had done, he pushed him a little too hard just like Wilbur had done, he yelled and shouted and blamed and did everything just a little fiercer, a little sharper. He twisted Tommy’s memory so that the boy relied on him, and only him, and he cast Ghostbur aside once he couldn’t use the specter anymore. 

Everything after that was harder to remember.

He knew that Tommy and Techno had been working together at some point, but he hadn’t been around for that. Wilbur didn’t know how he knew that. 

_“Techno, L’manberg is my unfinished symphony.” Tommy was standing outside of a burning building, looking up into his older brother’s eyes, determination smoldering in his blue gaze._

His heart skipped a beat. 

Wilbur didn’t know why Tommy believed that. He was falling into that same trap, set by Dream, set by everyone around him - set by _himself_. He’d set it up and now Tommy was tripping right into it. Every weight would settle on his shoulders, and he wouldn’t be able to hold them up. And he had done so much wrong to his brother that he wasn’t even sure that he would’ve wanted his help anymore. 

_Every word he said was spoken with such great seriousness that it was near impossible to believe this was the same individual who had burnt houses for fun as a nighttime activity. “The discs will end the melody.”_

He knew now that the melody never ended.

Then there was Doomsday, but that was like looking past a piece of glass. It was impossible to tell what was on the opposing side, no matter how hard the pane was cleaned, no matter what adjustments were made, it was still blurry and he couldn’t remember. There was yelling, there was sobbing, crying, shouting, laughing, surprisingly. It was like he was the one laughing over L’manberg’s ashes instead of Techno and Phil.

Phil?

_“I sowed the seeds of peace, and yet I’m the one who pays for war.” Soft brown eyes lifted to meet a cold azure gaze, a gaze which had detached itself from the prying optics of a ghost who couldn’t lean onto anything except himself. And he himself was not a steady individual. He flitted a bit too far to the right when he should’ve leaned left; in the evenings, it was almost as if his sweater was not a sweater and all, and instead was replaced by a trench coat, soaked in blood and tears._

_“Phil-”_

Phil was gone. L’manberg was gone, in a blaze of flaming glory, gone too quick but too slow for a man who had wanted it dissolved months prior. In its place rose the original tyrant of it all, and Wilbur wasn’t there this time to help. Ghostbur was fading, and the specter had no idea why. 

His first speculation was that people were forgetting about him. In the perplexing time period that followed L’manberg’s fall - which was not something he could remember very well as it was - maybe everyone had just forgotten about him. A captain went down with his ship, after all. Phil didn’t live in L’manberg anymore, and the location of Techno’s cabin was suddenly a place that he couldn’t go to.

Pressure slowly built in his chest, where his father had driven a sword through him. It was painful, tight, like he wanted to cry and yet couldn’t get any tears to roll from his eyes to his cheeks. The feeling evolved, though, to a smokey, terrifying numbness that made it difficult to move. His limbs turned to ice. He tried to find Tommy in his last moments, stuck in the ruins of L’manberg, searching for the boy who he had come back for.

And then Ghostbur was gone, and he rose in his place.

Wilbur, with the blue coat on his shoulders, with the real smile on his face.

Ghostbur’s symphony was up, and so was Wilbur’s. They would be at peace. All of them would be at peace - all versions of himself that had twisted so far from the original under all sorts of different stressors… finally, he thought as he leaned against an invisible wall, everything would be fine. Tommy was free, whatever that meant. Tommy was pleased. Happy.

_“Wait, Tubbo?”_

His chest hurt. Absently his eyes flicked closed, and in his eyes an image bloomed.

_“Sit down, sit down.” Tommy was sitting on the bench with Tubbo at his side, and both of them were quiet, albeit not for long. Neither of them knew what to say, and it was difficult to tell why, but they were smiling into the sunrise._

_Cat’s gentle tune flitted in their ears._

_“This is surreal!”_

_Gentle light patterned itself on both of their faces, illuminating their frames in dawn’s first rays. “We have both the discs.” A grin spread to both of their features like an infectious disease, but a welcome one, for the disease was a genuine excitement and happiness that neither individual had experienced in such a long time._

Tommy had both of the discs?

Oh, God.

His chest hurt. His head hurt. Everything hurt, and for seemingly no reason at all. It was like blood was spilling from his mouth again, mania tinged his mind, things were fading and he didn’t know why, why did he do that, why did he hurt him, why did things hurt, why, why, why- 

The memories were getting harder to distinguish from the present.

_A cheer sounded from Tubbo, seated to Tommy’s left, and his hand went into the air. His hands were shaking slightly, but the motion was full of power, like he had destroyed any and all evil in the world, and the only thing left was him and his best friend. “We did it!”_

The present?

_There was dismissal in the next statements, faintly touched by a distant concern and fear that he didn’t want to bring up again, that he’d rather ignore. “We don’t even have to think about Wilbur, he’s- we’ve done it!”_

What? No, no, no, he didn’t want to go. But he hadn’t gone anywhere, right? In a faraway place, his fingers twitched, his eyes fluttered slightly. He needed to speak to Tommy if he had the discs. He didn’t _remember_ it happening, but if it was what he was hearing, then it was true, right? Warmth and pride filled his dead heart; had Tommy done it? Had Tommy done what he’d spent years trying to do?

Did Tommy win a war against Dream, fair and square, with no flowery language to convince him?

_“Dream’s gone! He’s gone!” The words were uttered in an unexpected manner, like a declaration of victory. “This is exciting!” Tubbo grinned, gently punching his friend in the arm. A bruise mottled its way across his pale skin, and Tommy seemed to flinch for a moment before the notion faded completely and he punched his friend lightly back._

_The duo lightly giggled to themselves, like they were boys and not kids shoved into war too early, like their childhoods had not been wrecked by bloodshed and arrows and death when it should’ve been full of bees and flowers and pleasant guitar tunes._

This was real. Tommy was sitting on a bench with Tubbo, and they had the discs back.

“What the hell? Wilbur! Why are you doing this shit again?!” Schlatt’s shout was dulled significantly, like he was screaming from a million miles off. “Wilbur! Oh, you- don’t leave me here again! It’s so much more fun when I can piss you off! Hey- hey! _Wilbur!_ ”

_Tommy let out a breath of relief, presumably, as his head dropped onto his hands. His elbows rest on his knees, eyes pinned to the rising sun in front of him, where the light changed from pale blue to a brilliant golden gleam._

_“We don’t have to think about any of this anymore.”_

_Tubbo grinned again, and suddenly the image felt re_ al. Wilbur was standing behind the two boys who he had dragged into war, who lives he had ruined, with that classic blue coat draped over his shoulders, with that typical black hat smacked atop his brown locks. The sunlight felt warm and authentic on his face, like it was embracing him, too, like it knew of the guilt and the terror and the fear that stirred in his mind, too.

“We won!” Tubbo’s voice was excited, and it made his chest tighten immediately. The last time he remembered hearing it like that had been in L’manberg...maybe when they’d gotten independence. That had been so long ago.

His boot thumped soundlessly against the grass beneath him, and Wilbur’s hand lifted delicately into the air. As he went to lay it on Tommy’s shoulder, he suddenly remembered the flames that had so commonly leapt from beneath his skin and spread to the boy’s nature and attitude.

 _Shit._ What if he didn’t want to see him? What if Tommy hated him for all that he had done? In theory, it would be reasonable, and the man wouldn’t have even blamed him. It would’ve hurt a lot, but in the end, what was best for Tommy was paramount. If Tommy didn’t want to speak to him, then he’d stop. He’d withdraw and he’d… well, he didn’t know what he’d do. His heart ached at the idea. _I want him to know I’m proud of him._

Ghostbur had been created to help and assist Tommy. The ‘unfinished business’ that the specter spoke of hadn’t been some sort of idea to create comfort for him - it was a real thing. Tommy had been the individual who Ghostbur had been meant to help, and he’d tried his best. Wilbur knew what had happened during the exile when nobody else had. He knew about the fire on his wrists, the lava that called his name, the black-and-blue that spread across his skin.

But with the retrieval of the discs, Ghostbur didn’t need to exist, and so he didn’t. And so all was right in the world. Except it wasn’t, because now he wasn’t in a yellow sweater or a casual outfit, and instead was adorned in the revolutionary getup from years ago. 

Yet he didn’t know how he had gotten here, how he had finally escaped Schlatt’s irritating rambles and his own thoughts and memories and was now in the SMP as he remembered it in his greatest days. And he was not about to waste this chance. If Tommy didn’t want to speak to him, then he’d have to say so. And even then, Wilbur had to know how he’d gotten those damned discs back.

Wilbur withdrew his hand and spoke not to his soldier, not to his vice-president, not to his buddy in exile, not to his puppet, but to his brother, and nobody else in the whole wide world, because he knew that for once in his life, he deserved every bit of attention that he was going to get.

“And you’re not dead.”


End file.
